We unpacked a small package of coins that were in my mother-in-law’s home when she died. Obviously there was some value – but we hadn’t gone through them. The 50 “junk silver” mercury dimes showed she had decided to invest in some silver coins – and got us looking at everything. The pre-war Soviet coins – nine of them, not quite adding up to two rubles. The cash she had carried with her when she was taken from Kiev to spend the second World War as a “guest worker” in Hitler’s Germany.
A single Reichsmark and a five pfennig coin that she had brought from Germany to the US when she left after the war.
And a Libby Diamond Anniversary dollar that must have been purchased with a plan to share it with her daughter or granddaughter – a plan that was forgotten, yet obvious as we looked for information on the coin that might be online.
There was one for sale on ebay. I’m guessing that she bought it in an Illinois coin shop while we lived in Libby – whether for my wife or daughter, I don’t know. Still, the message that she was thinking of them arrived.
Trego's Mountain Ear 